Save Article

Tech Entrepreneurs Switch to Hardware

Tony Fadell, father of the iPod, was right. "There is a reason they call it hardware—it is hard," he said at the LeWeb conference in Paris last year. But that hasn't stopped many tech entrepreneurs from eschewing software for physical products.

What is behind the renaissance in hardware? According to entrepreneurs, a number of things have coincided to lower the barriers for hardware startups and speed up development: the growth of the smartphone, the rise of 3-D printing and, to a lesser extent, the impact of new...